


Let Us Not Be Shadows of Ourselves

by brokenmemento



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, Complicated Relationships, F/F, Falling In Love, Happily Ever Afters, Magic and Chaos, Slow Burn, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:33:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26224216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenmemento/pseuds/brokenmemento
Summary: Set after the events of "Ambition; Destruction (And the Things We Tell Ourselves)," the Tissaia in the alternate world must grapple with her feelings for the no longer present Yennefer she originally met and navigate her relationship with the one in front of her eyes that's she pulled from a pig pen in Aedirn.
Relationships: Tissaia de Vries & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Tissaia de Vries/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 44
Kudos: 91





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> QUICK SUMMARY: Yen got pulled through a portal, met an alt!Tissaia and got to sample what being with her Tissaia would be like. Her Tissaia saves her from alt!world and they get together romantically. Alt! Tissaia has found alt!Yennefer on the pig farm. 
> 
> That being said, I don't think you really have to read the other VERY lengthy fic to get this one. Although if you do and comment/kudos, I love you long time. This one will be (much) shorter. About 1k-2k words per chapter.
> 
> This story is dedicated to wydville (lullabystander) and mindmypensieve. Without the encouragement of you two, this would have never occurred. Since the idea wasn't mine, this story belongs to the two of you.

She knows that time doesn’t work the same between realms but she tries to think about it little. There’s too much attached to living in the past, to dreaming dreams that she ought not dare to have. 

Because a few scant months ago, Tissaia planted her boots in muddy soil and ripped a soul from an unforgiving world. Transplanted it into a foreign world of magic and chaos. One that has never learned an ounce of either as long as it’s been creeping the halls of Aretuza. 

Which is why Yennefer sits nearby in a small and unassuming cottage. Because for as much clout as Tissaia holds, she cannot let Yennefer roam freely when the girl is not learning the Art. Because even though Tissaia has searched Yennefer’s skin and bones and very existence for it, there is none to be had. Not like the bright flickering flame of the one that set Tissaia’s world on fire and left it to grow back. 

Tissaia is not bitter about this. She’s a practical woman and has had to tell herself that despondency is unbecoming, that you can’t will a person to be even another version of themselves—whatever life that may be. 

She visits the young woman when the Brotherhood’s watchful eyes are not turned upon her, tells herself that when she stays well beyond a decent hour to watch Yennefer fall asleep just so she can finally have a chance to touch the tanned skin of her arm, the raven tresses of her hair as she sits in slumber, that this is something she would do for anyone she cares for. 

But then she remembers again that it is not care she feels for the woman, the edges of it maybe resembling the simplistic emotion. Yet really, it’s the swirl of love that eats away at the care, morphs it, and changes it to make it barely containable in Tissaia’s body, even on a good day. 

It’s what makes her feel like she’s raking her hands through a mist or a fog daily. To have the iron will of something strangling her heart and having to staunch it with every beat. 

Days pass. She lives. She survives. She has to.

//-----//

She feels the slightly warped version of her own energy filling the space of her room before she actually sees her. It’s the waning hours of the day and the candlelight flickers against the walls and furnishings of her quarters.

The stream rises from her mug, the tendrils lifting into the air in delicate curls. Tissaia conjures another, points to it without a word, and puffs on her own beverage as she watches herself sit down. 

“To what do I ascribe the purpose of this meeting?” Tissaia finds she’s asking herself, the one that appeared on a field in Temeria and managed to flit back into time and space with the version of Yennefer that robbed a large chunk of her heart. 

The one that can boast to knowing Yennefer in a way she can only describe the borders of, not the entire whole. She watches herself pick up the conjured mug and hold it in her hands, sitting in the chair across from her. After a few minutes, she speaks. 

“Her mind is never quiet, you know.” The tone isn’t severe or warning nor does it hold the heat like what works its way into their palms. “It thinks of you still.”

The admission should be layered in frankness and Tissaia supposes it is were she to dig at it deeper. But the complications to it, the feelings of three hearts pressed against the implication of it (maybe even four now. Tissaia isn’t sure yet) isn’t any way to live. 

“I’d be lying if I said my mind never wanders to her either,” Tissaia tells herself. 

Because it’s truth and conundrum all in one. She doesn’t speak of the Yennefer occupying a cottage just off the isle, about how this visit is intercutting on the nightly routine of sending this world’s Yennefer to the lands of slumbered sleep. About how she’s taken it upon herself to watch after the young woman like a sheep. 

Tissaia finds herself sighing, pinching the bridge of her nose. She’s tired, incredibly so. Tired of fighting against her own chest. Against a past that should have fizzled from lashing against metaphorical rocks inside her own mind to beat it away. 

Glancing up, she studies herself. Wonders how she can be so much lighter in one world and so weighed down in another. Her other self practically glows in the faint light, her cheeks rosy and her brow not as creased as the first time they encountered one another. 

A product of being in love, Tissaia supposes. She silently marvels at the ability of that emotion to have polar effects. To elevate one and leave another to scrape the bottom. 

“So did you find her? In this world I mean,” the woman across from her asks. “Does she know of magic?”

 _I started in the first place you looked_ , Tissaia thinks. Leaves that unsaid. She does voice the next bit of her thinking, even though she wraps it in vagueness. 

“I know of her, yes. Magic, however, is not within her,” she finds herself sharing, so against the idea at first of letting the realness of it hit the air. 

But now that it's out, it feels good that someone else knows, even if it’s her alternate and even if she cannot possibly comprehend the depth of it. The ability to fathom this fact can never belong to her counterpart. 

“Mmm,” the small woman hums noncommittally because she does not know of a Yennefer without swirling chaos. “Have you taken her under your wing regardless?”

“I don’t see how any of that could possibly matter to you,” Tisssia shakes her head. “You have Yennefer wholly. The ways in which this world differs from your own are vast.”

She watches as the woman stands, folds her hands underneath her breasts. Her face is pensive, her look still far off. She turns and purses her lips before she speaks. 

“Yennefer has a way about her. Of growing roots in places where she would be ill-advised to lay them down. Places where little good has ever been. She thrives there one could say,” she says and Tissaia knows that she’s referring to herself. “Do not give up on what it is you wish for. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that those types of things can bear fruition.”

As she opens a portal, Tissaia stops her from entering. “Does she know of your continued use of time and space to cross realms?” Referring to her appearance in Tissaia’s chambers tonight. 

Now it’s the other woman’s turn to look as if an answer will not be borne. She must feel as if she owes it to Tissaia though, so she answers in a clipped response. 

“She does not.” She fixes Tissaia with a look. “Nor will she ever.”

Tisssia nods, had expected this much. “Yennefer belongs to you now.” She has no idea why she says it. Maybe to convince herself of it, maybe to let her mirror understand the gift she’s been given.

“That may be, but she belonged to you first,” her alternate challenges, a tinge of melancholy lining her words.

“I think we both know that is no fault of mine,” Tissaia tells her. Realizes the dagger-like quality to her words. 

But she cannot imagine squandering something so precious for _years,_ at not seeing value the moment something of worth crossed her path. Tissaia is guilty of many things in her life, but not of throwing away what’s been laid in her hands. 

She says her words to remind herself, to remind the woman across from her, that the mistake should never be made again. 

The quiet settles. Becomes electric. When it’s obvious nothing else will pass between them, she watches herself step through the portal and disappear once more. 

Tissaia glances at her drink, the one abandoned nearby it just the same. She closes her eyes and thinks of hot hands, warm breath, and even more scorching heartbeats. 

She tries not to tremble against the onslaught of it. 


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trying to build your girl's future is hard to do

The first thing she tells the woman after she loads her on the cart is the truth. “I cannot take you with me to Aretuza.” It almost guts her to say.

Yennefer’s look is distant, a little glassy eyed. “I’m still very lost as to how you think you know me.” She turns her amethyst eyes then. “But I feel it. Which is very hard to understand still and, quite frankly, a little fucking weird.”

Tissaia can’t help herself. She laughs and raises an eyebrow. Loves that even an ounce of Yennefer’s gumption is something she can bridge the gap between them on. “It’s a long tale best parceled out perhaps.”

“Where is Aretuza?” Yennefer asks. 

“On the isle of Thanedd.”

She whistles lowly, sighs. “I suppose we have the time then. So tell me why I am not to enter your school of magic and mayhem.”

Tissaia’s face goes soft but her brows knit together. “For precisely both of those reasons and so many more-you know of none of it and it does not exist within you.” She can’t help it. She has to touch her, so she lays a hand on her forearm. “You will be close by though.” 

_To me_ is the given. Yennefer seems to understand this and nods. She shrugs. “Wherever it may be, it must be better than a pigpen.”

“Of that, I can assure you,” Tissaia says confidently. Looks down. Pulls her hand away with the vestiges of willpower she owns. 

She looks at where her hand once lay. Yennefer does the same.

//-----//

They’re on their knees in the thatched roof cottage on the mainland. The one that, if you were to walk out the front door and peer to the horizon, the faint outline of Aretuza can be seen against the rock facing. 

A pebble hovers in the air, the flowers curling in wilt within Tissaia’s fingers. Yennefer watches warily as the petals crinkle in on themselves and fold completely for all eternity. Glancing up with seafoam eyes, Tissaia tries to gauge a reaction from the form in front of her. 

“This is magic then,” Yennefer nods. Tissaia finds it hard to read her, thankful when she continues. “I’ve heard of it all my life but never witnessed it first hand.”

“It’s one of the first lessons I teach the girls. About how something cannot be taken without giving. How spells and sorcery cannot be plucked from the air and chaos channeled in such a way that something else is not removed.” Tissaia stops, lets Yennefer process. “This is the way of life I lead when we are not together.”

She finds herself setting down the pebble more gingerly than normal, losing her poise from under the intense gaze fixed upon her. She finds her fingers worrying with the yarn on the perimeter of the rug below them. 

“I can’t pretend to understand an ounce of this,” Yennefer frowns, but it flits away as soon as it graces her features. “But I respect your ways and find you as enchanting as any soul I’ve ever met.”

The words are innocuous, Tissaia just knows, but it has her fingers clamping down on the fabric she’d been toying with seconds ago. Because she could let these things that have been said be something if she’s not too careful. 

“Magic and awe tend to go hand in hand. It can be exhilarating and in the same token, devastating.” Tissaia watches as Yennefer rises and begins pacing. 

“Why did you bring me here when there is nothing remarkable about me at all?” Her hands are on her hips and her eyes hold Tissaia against a rock and a hard place. 

“That’s...that’s simply not true at all.”

“But isn’t it?” Yennefer bends to sit on her knees again, her haunches angled and behind her. “You’ve said it yourself—-you’ve felt no whisper of your magic in me. I am not like…” 

Tissaia watches her falter with carefulness, tenderness. She reaches out to touch her but Yennefer wrenches away. “Yen…”

“Be it book or spell or...or whatever, I have no knowledge of it beyond what you teach me. What you _say_ it is. I do not hold purpose yet in this life and I wish to. But Tissaia, I think magic is not it.” 

And Yennefer is _crying_ , as if not being able to conduct chaos is an affront to Tissaia, as if tolerance is wrought only through the practice of it. If Tissaia had known there would be any part of her left to break, she never would have pressed on with this, never would have kept uncovering the world of it to Yennefer. 

Because her heart is in pieces as Yennefer begins to sob in earnest, lost in the ebb and flow of life, and wondering when she will come up for air. 

Tissaia does not forbid the touch that comes, the way Yennefer lays her head on her chest and scrabbles for purchase and comfort with fistfuls of Tissaia’s dress. 

She holds her, lays her hand across the top of Yennefer’s shaking one. Peppers daring kisses to every sliver of exposed skin. 

“If it’s purpose you seek, I cannot give it,” Tissaia tries to soothe. She stops as an idea wiggles around, takes hold. Yennefer seems to sense the change in her body language and raises her bleary eyes to look upward. “But I do know someone, perhaps one of the strongest women to ever exist without magic. What I’ve seen her do—what she’s capable of…”

“Take me to her,” Yennefer says immediately. 

“It is a bit of a trek,” Tissaia admits, pushes back a strand of rogue hair escaping wildly to fall in front of Yennefer’s face. 

As reluctant as she is to leave, preparations must be made for what Tissaia has suggested, what Yennefer is agreeing to and asking for. She rises and offers a hand to pull Yennefer up. 

They stand toe to toe, close, but not quite breathing the same air. It’s not the first time they’ve been like this but it feels like the first time that maybe Yennefer feels the past stacking up in Tissaia and has her own sort of emotion toward it. 

“Tissaia,” Yennefer speaks, but all Tissaia hears is the delicate curl of her name in Yennefer’s mouth. Wishes it could be other places, mostly against her own. 

When Yennefer takes a maddening step inward, Tissaia can do nothing but flee. She does not like standing in places that feel like worn footprints. She does not like to feel the tugging want to compare. 

It’s easier to walk away from the temptation, to steel her fingers from dancing in the places she has longed to touch. It’s much safer to transition her mind to think about the task at hand: making contact with a woman that all but tried to kill her a year ago. 

//-----//

When they walk through the castle gates, Yennefer’s eyes scan every corner and crevice, wary. Tissaia supposes it’s the right kind of reaction to have in a place such as this, a place where grandiose is just as likely to be met by slinking mischief far from the eyes of the Queen, who would likely skewer anyone she felt like. 

It’s for this reason that Tissaia has brought Yennefer here. Where blue flags flap in the incoming sea breeze and the streets are filled with the facades of buildings trying to look as regal as their queen. 

Tissaia is surprised when instead of an envoy meeting them, the woman walks from the gates herself. Her hair is pulled up and face void of any flair befitting of a queen. She’s dressed in breeches, a simple cotton shirt, and her broadsword rests on a scabbard at her hip. 

Anyone not knowing her could mistake her for a common peasant, not that grand ruler of the country by the sea and south of the Yaruga. No one would know the bloodshed that’s occurred at her hands, how she’s lead many a soul into battle with her own at the forefront. But Tissaia does, and that is why she has brought Yennefer to meet her. 

“We go decades without speaking and now I see you twice in one year, Rectoress. This must be a new record,” she smiles. It holds no ill will behind it though. Not like the last time they were face to face. 

“Under better pretenses this time,” Tissaia clarifies, threads a hand and arm behind Yennefer to draw her forward. “This is Yennefer of Vengerberg.”

Yennefer says nothing, just levels her eyes at the woman before her. Sizing her up no doubt. But anyone who’s anyone, a subject of this kingdom or no, has heard of this woman’s reputation. 

“From a pig pen you are plucked to a warrior you will make,” the woman before them hums. “I do say, Miss de Vries has brought you to the right place.”

A sparring sword is tossed at Yennefer then. She bumbles it a little before gripping the hilt tightly, her knuckles going white. 

If magic were in the young woman’s repertoire, Tissaia would open the link between their minds. She would say _calm yourself and learn her ways_ or _this is how you finally rise above the life you’ve been given_ or _this is what I know to do for you in this world we live in._

But she cannot speak to Yennefer that way and instead, must do it with a tender touch to the inside of her wrist. She must speak with her eyes and with the warmth of her skin pressed into that of Yennefer’s. Because even though their minds cannot link, they’ve learned the speech of silence well. Can read with the looks they pass between. 

Tissaia is aware of the warrior woman’s eyes tracking the touch, aware of how her eyebrow raises, and her lips quirk. How she could comment on what she sees but mercifully, does not. 

“Shall we begin, Miss Vengerberg?” Calanthe asks. 

Tissaia feels Yennefer’s grip tighten on the sword. “Yes, let’s.”

Even though Yennefer lacks the chaos of magic, there is concern that her other ways will be like striking a match on top of dried and brittle tinder. That she and Calanthe will scorch one another in dominance. But when Calanthe offers a deferential hand, letting Yennefer walk by into the keep, Tissaia sighs with relief. 

Perhaps it will be okay in the end. And if it’s not? Well, Tissaia will meet that possibility if ever it arrives. 


	3. Three

Tissaia watches Yennefer change before her very eyes. It shouldn’t be the first divide in Tissaia’s mind about how the Yennefer in front of her differs from the one in another world, but somehow it is just that. 

She knows of Yennefer’s skin, the curves of it under her hands, and the woman standing nearby is now only similar, not identical. It is this she discovers after one particularly brutal training day for Yennefer, one that she spends mostly on the ground. 

When she has appeared at the designated time, there is an eggplant colored bruise forming underneath an eye, a sleeve sliced and blood speckling the fabric. When Tissaia opens her mouth in query, Yennefer silences her with a severe look and points outside of the gates. 

“That one of yours is a spitfire,” Calanthe muses, leaning against a wall with a dripping ladle full of water. “Her anger makes her passionate, but you know as well as any that sometimes, that can also be someone’s downfall.”

“Does she have it in her to learn the ways of the sword or not?” Tissaia sighs, feels the contents of her heart shifting too much to keep up with.

 _If Yennefer cannot learn this, what place is there for her then?_ She has not thought of a backup plan for this. 

“Let me put it this way: if she can get past her hangups? She might just rival my best soldier even though he is of the other gender,” Calanthe’s lips pull back in a toothy grin. “But I don’t suppose you’ll ever let her fight for the honor and glory of Cintra, will you?”

Tissaia’s derisive snort is answer enough and Calanthe barks out a raspy laugh. So hard to remember that the woman commands an entire country with poise and grace while also simultaneously riding into battle beside those who fight with and for her. 

“I didn’t think so, but I had to try.” She spreads her hands out and shrugs. “Who would I be if I didn’t try? I have to keep the great Rectoress on her toes, even if we are on the same side of the fight now.”

“Just because I’ve placed a mage in your court, it does not wipe decades of ignorance and one day of utter chaos you put me through,” Tissaia warns but then loses some of the severity in her tone. The next part is much softer. She looks at the gates as she says the words. “This, however, might.”

“You let your breast lead you too much, warrior woman,” Calanthe waves. Tissaia cocks her head to the side at the assessment of her. Calanthe clarifies. “While I may carry a sword to my conflicts, I am of no doubt that you could bring the world down around our ears if one were to press you. I just hope it’s not because of Vengerberg.”

She’s lost in the words when a firm hand touches her shoulder and she’s looking into Calanthe’s chocolate eyes. There’s fierceness there, sincerity too. “Give me time. You’ll not recognize her one day.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Tissaia mutters and turns on a heel, following in the footsteps of Yennefer. 

When she walks through the gate, she finds the woman glowering and leaning against the wall. When Tissaia opens her mouth to speak, Yennefer pushes off of the surface and groans. 

“Let’s just...go,” her tired voice requests. “I’ve had an absolute shit day and everything aches. I’m going to sit in a scalding tub until it resembles cool creek water.”

She walks a few paces and then winces. “Actually, can you do that magic thing so that I don’t have to use my feet? I’m pretty sure there are blisters there.”

Tissaia rolls her eyes but conjures the portal. “That magic thing?” Her eyebrow quirks. She grips Yennefer around the hip. Solely for portaling purposes, she tells herself. Not for any other reason. 

They walk out of it into the cottage and Yennefer turns to Tissaia again with a sheepish look on her face, pointing toward the rounded wood and the liner placed within it. 

“So, what would I have to do to persuade you that your abilities are of great necessity once more so that I don’t have to carry in pail after pail of water to warm by the hearth,” Yennefer clasps her hands together and all but begs with soft eyes. 

That is no doubt played up to finagle exactly what she wants. As if Tissaia had any part to her that could refuse. _Bid me be at your behest for anything and I should do it_ , Tissaia thinks and is more than grateful Yennefer cannot pick the lock on her mind to get in. 

Tissaia gives her a rueful smile. Muttering the words, the basin fills with piping hot water that sends steam venting up into the air. Yennefer bends her knees a little and groans in excitement, then looks at Tissaia. 

“The wonders of you never cease,” the woman smiles and Tissaia waves her off. 

“Remember that the next time you feel the need to grumble about the workings of it being out of your purview,” Tissaia grouses a little and makes her way to the cottage’s door. 

“I can barely move, my muscles are so sore. Can’t you stay to help me out a bit?” 

Tissaia’s hand hovers on the knob. She speaks her reply into the wood of the door. “I feel that would be unwise.” She does not turn around. 

Behind her, the rustle of clothing, more groans. A plopping of leather boots on planks. “You don’t have to walk on eggshells with me. I know of your time with my twin, but that does not mean that you and I should stand on opposite ends.

This is the first Yennefer has spoken of the less than fading memory. It surprises Tissaia a little with its frankness. “It was complicated, Yennefer.”

She braves turning around. Thankfully, most of Yennefer is still clothed. Her feet are bare and she’s untucked her shirt from her trousers and untied the laces at the throat of it. 

Yennefer holds out a hand and Tissaia finds herself begrudgingly helping. She can do this tactfully despite what she may feel. 

Once Yennefer is submerged mostly in the water and most of the sounds have only been the splash and trickle of it as it soothes her aching body, she leans over, back hunched, and watches as the droplets fall down. 

Her shoulders are strong, muscled, just like her arms as she rests her hands against the outer rim of the wooden tub. Tissaia traces her eyes along the veins in Yennefer’s hands, pointedly ignores the swell of her breasts not reaching the water the pools at her flat and notched abdomen. She finds herself clearing her throat without being aware of Yennefer’s effect on her own body, so lost in it to not see what is happening.

“Did you love her?” Yennefer asks. 

Tissaia is both grateful and ruffled by the distracting words, surmises that the truth is known but for some reason, she is asking Tissaia to say it. “What good would it do to reveal my feelings, regardless?” 

“You once told me that we belonged together not so long ago. Do you still believe it?” 

“I vowed it to you, did I not?” Tissaia knows that flinging a question back at an ask is not the way to move forward. “I shall uphold my words, no matter what form that togetherness takes.”

_Even if you can never love me as I do you._

They both settle into the quiet again. Yennefer sighs. Tissaia opens her mouth to do her own kind of silent exhale. The things left unsaid build between their hearts. 

//-----//

There comes a point when the world is either too big or too small or too something and because things close in or break open, Tissaia is standing in front of the elder members of the Chapter and Yennefer’s non-magical body within the walls of Aretuza. 

She’s done her best to keep Yennefer away, but she’d needed to tell her of the upcoming assignment to Cidaris to investigate a conduit moment from a young girl who walks the shorelines of North Sea and weaves her chaos with the waves. 

Tissaia had meant to tell Yennefer this, but the announcement of her departure had been hasty. These moments are few and far between so speed is of the utmost necessity. In order to let Yennefer know of her immediate departure, she’d summoned her into an area less frequented but still taking a chance. 

So of course, they come to stand face to face with a whole lot of people Tissaia would absolutely not like to be looking on. 

“What’s the meaning of this?” is the first thing addressed to her and she has no idea how to answer. 

Glancing to her side, she sees Yennefer’s set jaw, the violet of her eyes holding flames. Calanthe has prepared her for any and all confrontation and Tissaia doesn’t miss the woman’s grip on the hilt of her sword on her hip.

Before Tissaia can get a word out, Yennefer is letting go of her sword, lacing an arm behind Tissaia’s back, and letting her fingers push into the material and flesh of Tissaia’s hip.

Tissaia feels her face pink, her ears burn. The pure possessiveness in the gesture all but ruining her from any type of action. She’s not like this, a bumbling mess incapable of speech or movement. Yet here she is. 

“I’m to accompany her south and serve as protection detail,” Yennefer throws her shoulders back. 

Tissaia can feel the sturdiness of her frame just by being near her. She has to will herself not to get lost in the thoughts of it, to not ache to discover its lithe planes.

Sets of eyes cast to her now. “Yes,” she feels herself speak, no preparation at all from within for what’s coming out of her mouth. “An envoy of Aedirn blood that has been trained by the Lioness of Cintra, Queen Calanthe.”

Some members still look dubious, no doubt detecting Yennefer’s lack of magical abilities. There’s a soft murmur among a few, some commenting on how they aren’t afforded the same benefit on their own excursions. 

“She’s on no one’s payroll but my own,” Tissaia glares across the disingenuous faces gathered around. “Don’t worry about the finances of the Brotherhood. I wouldn’t _ever_ think of putting us in an imposition.”

Grabbing Yennefer a little roughly by the arm, she pulls the woman down the hallway. She wants to wipe the smug smile from her face. They’ve both made mistakes today, ones neither of them are likely to forget if the Brotherhood has any say. 

“We’re going away together,” Yennefer says conspiratorially. Tissaia tries not to let the implications of how this could go incredibly wrong on a myriad of levels stall her out. “It is time for a grand adventure, my dear Tissaia.”

When she grips Tissaia’s hand and laces their fingers together as they walk down the hall, Tissaia’s mind cannot settle on one thing. 

There’s the press of Yennefer’s digits against her own. The term of endearment she’s used still rings in Tissaia’s ears. The choosing of the word _my_ lodges itself in Tissaia’s heart. She tries not to fill up with hope. 

//-----//

They’re ambushed outside of Caelf, roustabout bandits looking for coin and seeing two women as easy prey despite the weapon on Yennefer’s hip, the dagger tucked tightly into her cloak. 

Tissaia lets out a groan, _thinks not this again,_ and watches as the motley crew circle them and their spooked horses who rare up and then paw at the soil when their hooves are touching the ground. 

With eventuality, they all clash. Tissaia is deft in her combat style as well yet it pales in comparison to the skilled and calculated moves that Yennefer makes as she disposes of the group easily and leaves Tissaia wondering what happened to the din.

One moment, they’re outnumbered seven to two and the next, they are the only ones standing. Tissaia throws an incredulous look in Yennefer's direction only to be met with a wide grin.

“Fuck yes!” she pumps her fist in the air with her sword held high. She jauntily wanders over to stand in front of Tissaia and barks out a laugh. “It seems Calanthe has made me of use after all.”

Tissaia frowns and breathes heavily, sweat prickling everywhere despite the short skirmish. Just as she’s about to place her dagger back into her cloak, Yennefer stills her with a hand as she pushes back an errant hair that has escaped the once perfectly quaffed bun. 

The gesture would in and of itself be fine were that all it was. But when the hair gets tucked, Yennefer lingers with her index and middle finger sliding under Tissaia’s jaw and her thumb tracing the jut of it. 

The unnatural thudding of Tissaia’s heart must be audible from where they stand to the sea’s shore. Whatever possesses Yennefer to offer such a touch only amplifies the longer they stand quietly. 

Yennefer leans in, her eyes close, she whispers “Tissaia, you’re…” and never gets to finish because Tissaia is ducking her head and taking a step back, leaving Yennefer stalled out in midair. 

“We need to keep moving,” she mutters as she brushes past Yennefer. 

Tears threaten to form as she makes her way to her mare. It’s not supposed to be this way, is it? They’re not supposed to be as electric as the kernel in the past. While she’d like to tell herself that what just happened was forever approaching, Tissaia still can’t make herself believe anything other than it was too good to be true. 


	4. Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tissaia is an idiot in love and love? Love makes us do stupid things

Tissaia wouldn’t exactly describe Yennefer as a fixture in Aretuza after their arrival back from Cidaris, nor is she even accepted. However, the Brotherhood remains quiet or turns a blind eye and treats her as if she doesn’t exist the bulk of the time. 

For this, Tissaia is both angry and grateful. But she moves on to the more pressing matters, once again getting ready for a meeting of the kingdoms. As she looks in the mirror at her sweeping dress and then over to Yennefer picking at a nail and feet hanging over the arm of a chair, she tries not to wish the woman would look up and comment on her appearance. 

Or command something of her, the way someone once did. It’s been two years now, countless more elsewhere in another stream of life that some versions of themselves are living. 

While she herself feels only vaguely common threads between her copy, she’s becoming less and less enraptured with the idea of holding Yennefer against the memory of her other, despite the recurring feelings tonight. 

Tonight is different because it’s a reminder of the last time Tissaia had the wildness coursing through her to touch herself at the bidding of someone else. 

“All this work for mere frivolity,” Yennefer mutters, finally looking up at Tissaia. Her eyes rake. Tissaia burns from the outside to in. She doesn’t miss the way she bites a lip and then busies herself with a goblet of wine. “Explain your fancy gathering to me once more?”

“Kingdom assignments are often times resolute but not necessarily binding forever. Mages eventually pass, unfortunate circumstances end a life prematurely, some postings are abandoned by the wild and willful.” Tissaia stops at the last part of her sentence, fixes the laced edge of the sleeve to her navy dress, the long train flaring out along the ground behind her. No slits tonight. 

“So you throw a fancy gathering to boast the brightest talents across the Continent in hopes they may guide a kingdom for decades,” Yennefer finishes. 

“Something like that,” Tissaia agrees. “We are looking to add to six kingdoms tonight. The rest will bring their mages in accompaniment.”

Yennefer stands then, hands on her hips, and looks Tissaia up and down. “Then if you are ready, I shall walk you down.”

The offer startles. Tissaia isn’t sure why Yennefer is prepared to do such a thing, especially when Tissaia had made it very clear that tonight was about expounding the benefits of the magical world to those in need of it. Yennefer holds no stake in the night and therefore, should find herself disposed of elsewhere. Tissaia vocalizes as much. 

“Should your protection detail not be near you at all times?” Yennefer ponders. “I’m sure even events such as these are not immune to a coup every now and again.” 

Tissaia snorts in derision. “I should think it a quick fight and hardly worth expending one’s chaos. We would burn each other up before any others could devise what happened.”

“I trust you in your magic and words but as for the rest of your kind, I find them slippery at best and fox like at worst. The shadows are wide and vast. I will never leave you without a light to fight,” Yennefer says simply, like it’s nothing to put her life on the line. 

Tissaia can only answer with a tight nod. “Let us go then.” She takes hold of her dress with one hand and looks hesitantly at Yennefer’s awaiting elbow before finally giving in and grasping it. 

It feels so incredibly different to walk into the great hall with her on her arm, so wonderfully _good_. Some eyes wander to their entrance, a couple of whispers sound. Tissaia doesn’t care when she knows that even in her casual clothes, Yennefer is still the most gorgeous thing in the room. 

Standing off to the side, Tissaia lets her arm rest in the crook of Yennefer’s elbow. She lets herself hang on. Yennefer doesn’t seem to mind and in fact, tucks Tissaia’s arm more tightly against her. 

They watch the festivities for a while. When someone approaches to converse, Yennefer steps back, deferrable to the nobles and archmages alike after a small bow. She wonders why it continues to surprise her, but Yennefer has become not at all who she thought she would be. 

When each walk away, she makes her way back and extends her arm again for Tissaia to take, which she does. During this time of closeness and quiet, she thinks a lot of things. About how she wishes she could dip her hand to Yennefer’s and pull her to the floor to dance with a smile on her lips. That she would love to have Yennefer follow her at the end of the night too.

She almost says the former when she’s consumed two flutes of a lighter liquor that makes Tissaia feel airy and fuzzy at the same time. Their eyes catch one another after a sip and don’t let go. 

“Is this the world the other me knows?” Yennefer asks seriously. 

Tissaia shifts, looks down. These inquiries are becoming more frequent and she doesn’t know why. Is Yennefer fishing for something? Is she looking for affirmations that Tissaia is apt to give any second but must hold her tongue against the words for fear of the truth contorting them?

She finds herself saying nothing, only glancing at Yennefer out of the corner of her eye. She sees only purple burning into her. Throwing her shoulders back, she sets the flutes on a passing try and clasps her hands in front of her. 

“It’s a bit stuffy in here. Let’s take some air,” Tissaia suggests. Yennefer extends out a hand and arm meaning _lead the way._

They exit to the balcony overlooking the island, the waves calm tonight, and the stars burning overhead. The moon is in sickle formation, casting very little light across the world. Tissaia takes a deep breath of the salty sea and watches Yennefer’s pensive face. 

“You keep asking about her. Why?” Tissaia pointedly asks after a period of silence between the two of them. 

“Can I not be curious?” Yennefer tilts her head. 

“Yes, but to what end?” It comes out more than a little exasperated. Tissaia sees Yennefer flinch imperceptibly. She sighs. “There will be a day when I feel as if the story bears repeating. So far, it does not.”

“I see,” Yennefer nods and Tissaia has to wonder if she truly does. 

Something else is becoming apparent too. There’s a chasm growing between her and Yennefer that was never supposed to exist. She’s supposed to be bringing them together but with every day that passes, the unspoken between them grows and pushes them further apart. 

Tissaia ducks her head, has the now traitorous thought that she wishes she _could_ hear what Yennefer is thinking. At what point can Tissaia finally stop tossing them around as if in the waves below their feet? 

“How do we fix us?” is whispered. Tissaia feels like she’s being stabbed with her own dagger. 

It would be so easy to say _there’s nothing to fix_ or _we are fine and can exist as we always have._ But neither of those things are true and she cannot bring herself to say them. Instead, she murmurs a response. 

“I don’t know,” she feels hollow saying the words. 

Because she wants nothing to stand between them. Because she wants to be able to let go. Because she needs to stop living in some grandiose idea that must not be allowed to happen at the sake of her own poor heart. She’s spent years telling herself that she cannot be what Yennefer needs, what she could ever want. To influence that would be wrong. 

In another life, Tissaia could be strong enough. In another version of herself, she could take the things she wants. But in this one, the thing no one has ever been privy to is that the great Tissaia de Vries is scared. That she lets that fear drive her too much of the time even though she’s seen as a pillar of strength and composure. 

_In another life, I’d let myself love you out loud, freely._ In this one, she folds. Wants so badly to open when she feels Yennefer’s cool fingertips on the skin of her wrist, feels the contrasting press of her warm lips on her cool cheek. 

_I love you so much that it crowds my throat and heart,_ Tissaia wants to say. She’s not sure when she started running away from the truth rather than working toward it. They are not broken, just Tissaia is. And while it would be so easy to let Yennefer fix her, she cannot will it so. 

Any leaps are Yennefer’s to take. So far, she’s still standing on the ledge and looking down, even as Tissaia watches her walk back into the confines of Aretuza. 

Tissaia can see it now: Yennefer leaving to go back across the bridge to her cabin over the water. To her building a fire to heat the cottage. To ridding her clothes and bringing a hand upon herself to give herself a sampling of that warmth tucked against her body. 

It’s a quiet but sad type of life. One that Tissaia hopes Yennefer will grow tired of and burst forth from someday, wanting the same things but with Tissaia by her side. In the end, it’s a lovely dream. One that Tissaia hopes comes true, despite her own confounding heart.


	5. Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tissaia makes her own trip across realms and shows up at an inopportune time.

She does not admit it either (of that she can be accused like her alternate self) but she’s done her own figuring out. If the answer was made available in another seam in time, it must exist across all forms of worlds. Which is how she comes to find it too. 

The first time she does the jump, her veins thrum with energy. It takes all of minutes to learn about the enchanting sorceress and the imposing woman who is always a step ahead or behind that walk this world. Everyone knows Yennefer of Vengerberg and Tissaia de Vries, famed Rectoress of Aretuza. 

Tissaia knows that she’s made it to the right realm, that somewhere across the plains and fields, the swamps and mountains—somewhere the Yennefer that she knows exists. It takes catching her chaos signature all of once for Tissaia’s heart to spook and send her barreling back across space to her own realm, falling upon her knees, gasping for a lungful of air to take back to her body. 

The resolve to never jump again, of swearing to not go back, lasts all of a few weeks. For as much as she’s scolded herself to let go, for as much as she’s wanted to find a sliver of what she once had before in the pair of purple eyes she sees now every day, she knows there are boundaries that cannot be pushed. 

And that feels like a burning inside of her own body sometimes. Which is perhaps why she does it, portals back and picks up the whiff of Yennefer. Follows it to its source. All due to the fact that they’re both treading water, letting silences define them and their hearts flail about without resolution.

Tissaia can sense it in Yennefer too. She refuses to request it to stop. It’s all about choice, one she’s bent on giving Yennefer since it’s been a defining characteristic of her life in all realms. 

It leads her to Aretuza and she knows undoubtedly where she will find her. It’s why she mutters a cloaking spell and dampens the current of her own magic to imperceptibility. Hopefully enough to go undetected by either mage. Which, when she enters the chambers, are entwined in one another. 

And for ages, the makeup of Tissaia’s jealous heart was locked as tight as any other emotion ever could do to it. So it’s why she has to ponder in stunned wonder why no part of it rears its head when she sees her alternate moving against Yennefer. 

The woman’s back is smooth and strong, the muscles rippling below the skin that still glows as bright as the last time she laid eyes upon her. Brown hair cascades down to mid-back, has thrown itself over her shoulders in waves. 

Tissaia watches as the woman’s hips rock, a decadent cadence created with every swivel, with every rotation. Her hands work just as hard on the sheets, at the body laid flat and bare below her, legs framing the tanned skin of naked thighs underneath. 

There are sounds too, punctuated on the air. A labored breath here, a drawn-out sigh there. Not many words, no, but some. Small utterings that when let go, aren’t trivial or disconnected from the strings of the heart. 

Tissaia has not been the kind of woman to feel envy. It’s a twisting, knifelike emotion that does no body good. Still, she finds it odd she harbors none of it now, how she feels nothing toward her counterpart but joy. That in some version of life, in some other world, she is able to have without end. 

Yennefer sits them up then, holds onto her lover with lasting strength. A tight hold as if never wanting to let go. Nails and fingers run down the olive skin of Yennefer’s back as they spin and she watches the wild mane of the Rectoress spill over Yennefer’s shoulders as the woman bites at the flesh of her neck. 

Tissaia’s nostrils flare, because she is human after all, and watching is something that does not result in no effect. But she’s rid of her air when stark blue eyes fix onto her and hold as Yennefer works against the body she’s attached to. 

And she’s  _ watching _ her, just like Tissaia is doing to them as well. With every rise onto her knees and subsequent driving downward thrust, the woman’s eyes never tarry from the spot where Tissaia stands cloaked inside of the spell.

She shouldn’t be able to detect her chaos, for Tissaia has dampened it to nothingness. Only the faint speck of it might be noticeable if one were paying very careful attention. 

_ I felt you when you came into the room.  _

Tissaia reels, backpedals on her wedged shoes. She grips the train of her dress with one hand and presses the other against the loud thud of her chest, tries to calm her mind over the blood rushing through her ears.

_ Bloody hell, _ Tissaia thinks. 

_ To anyone else, you’d remain hidden. But you are  _ me  _ after all, _ ” she’s told through the link in their minds. She cuts it immediately, but that doesn’t remove the piercing blue eyes that never stray from where she stands. It’s only broken when Yennefer speaks, placing her hand on the woman’s cheek. 

“Tissaia, are you with me?” she asks as they move against one another. Wanting to know about the edge and if she’s standing on it too. 

But the words are also like iron striking against iron, the weight of them tearing Tissaia’s chest asunder. Because it’s not  _ her _ that she’s speaking them to. Because Tissaia cannot move from her cloak and answering resoundingly  _ yes, I am with you. _

And now she knows how words can ache within someone, especially when they have to be staunched. When mouths bite them back and they can’t travel the tubes of the ears and come to rest inside of hearts. 

For the first time in what seems like eons, the transfixed eyes roll backward and Tissaia watches herself come with a loud shuddering gasp that wrecks the room. 

It’s been a while since she’s given herself the gift of release, has felt it from anyone else. In fact, the last time she was touched was with Yennefer beneath her and hot hands pressed against her thighs.

She takes a moment to revel in the growing in distance memory. Hears the sounds escalating from Yennefer’s mouth too. The experience she was denied by fate or destiny or whatever force that is greater than she is capable of understanding, saw fit to it that Tissaia does not know how Yennefer sounds when she’s in the thralls of freefall. 

Quickly, the portal pops behind her. A chasm of swirling space and time, much like the contents mixing in an amalgam inside of her own body. The barriers of the world she’s leaving knit into the seams of her own and she steps through, back into a place she knows, the one that’s been familiar up until a girl on the ground spoke and turned it upside down. 

Her quarters are quiet without the sounds of passion dancing on the air. She places a hand against herself, just to _feel_ but feels guilty of the somewhat covetous emotions. To want and burn for it from the inside out. To feel scraped raw and flayed open with need. To chase a dream and catch it with bumbling fingertips and a strangle of happiness for a few scant seconds. To have to give it back even though it's all she can get.

Yet rather than indulge, she moves the hand away after a few seconds, instead pressing it against her chest again. She tries not to ache in multiple places. She tries not to be consumed with desire, with no outlet for the intensity of what she feels. 


	6. Six

**\---Six---**

It’s not that Tissaia has ever doubted Yennefer, no. But she has spent many nights awake and filling herself to the brim with hope that Yennefer will find her way in life. That the woman will come to rest inside of her own version of peace in the world. 

They’ve developed a rapport that Tissaia is comfortable inside of after years of push and pull, finally able to deal with the frustrating emotion of wishing for something more. It’s taken too long to stuff the desire down, especially when some moments between them still burn. 

Tissaia still refuses to project those desires on Yennefer though when she isn’t sure what their dynamic will be from day to day. She’d be lying if she said it wasn’t a process, but she’s always been particularly good at those, so she adapts. 

She thinks of the skirmish, the way that Yennefer had been so quick to step into the fray. The way she had contorted and moved, agile and quick, just like Calanthe has schooled her for years. 

Tissaia owes Yennefer her life starting there and for many things since then. She doesn't know how to breach that topic, to offer words of recompense for laying her life on the line in order to save her own. For the life Yennefer has lived and the resulting benefit to Tissaia’s in return. 

Calanthe may have trained Yennefer to be a fighter and Tissaia has employed her as such, but the way that her heart had caught in her throat when they were attacked that first time is something she is likely never to forget. Mostly because without Yennefer’s aid, she would have a sword through her gut. Would be dead maybe 100 times over if not for the warrior woman by her side. 

It’s twilight when she portals to the cabin that overlooks the sea. What’s surprising is that Yennefer is out front despite the chill coming off the water. When Tissaia walks up, she sees that Yennefer has dressed accordingly though.

Tall boots extend to mid-thigh, sleek and shining despite the gray day. Her breeches fit tighter than is per usual, the leather vest on her chest just as form-fitting which rises to her neck with fur around the collar. A thick white and ruffled top flows from the vest and down into thick leather gloves. The curls of her hair dance on the sea breeze and her purple eyes glow as she looks out across the horizon. 

“You’ll catch your death out here,” Tissaia mutters as she steps onto the outcropping of the cabin.

“If I’ve not caught it yet, I’m likely never to,” Yennefer shrugs, her face remaining impassive. 

“One would see fit to be more cautious and concurrently grateful for the breath that yet fills their lungs I should think—Not boastful of cheating death. I shouldn’t think those scenarios repeat themselves with the same results often,” Tissaia warns. 

“Death comes for us all at one point. There is no cheating it when it is to be the order of things,” is the sighed reply. 

“What of your melancholia? You’re even more brooding than normal.” Tissaia spits it out before she has time to decide if she truly wants the answer or not. When Yennefer turns to look at her finally, she thinks it best to not wish for such things.

“What do you see when you look at me?” And the words pare Tissaia to the bone. 

Tissaia expels a puff of air, lets her mouth hang open with absent words for a few moments before closing it again. She purses her lips and develops a harder look in her eyes than she means to. Nothing good will come of this. She does not arrive at Yennefer’s answer. 

“Stoic as ever, I see,” Yennefer grouses and turns on a heel, her boots hitting the wooden planking of the floor in heavy scuffs. As she disappears, Tissaia can do nothing but mutely follow along. 

As soon as she walks through the door, Yennefer spins on her again, bringing them much too close for any type of comfort for Tissaia to seek, nonplussed by the swiftness of her motions. Yennefer looks much the opposite, no worse for wear at seeing their bodies so near one another. 

“Why have you stuffed me in this cabin then, overlooking Aretuza but never to be a part of it? Overlooking you and your life, but to not be the same? I once asked you for my purpose and you did your best to lend me that, but now I struggle much the same.”

“Yennefer, these things are not easy matters. Much of life is not,” is the only thing Tissaia can find as a rebuttal. As some version of comfort too. 

She steps into Tissaia then, the contrasting yet dual feeling of the softness of her gloves pressing into wrist while the hard leather across her bosom does its own pressing against Tissaia’s more delicate one.

“Can you show me a bit of your life with her? The one the two of you created with your hands,” Yennefer requests. 

The gasp that falls from Tissaia is neither inaudible nor ladylike. It’s raspy and shocked. This is not something they’ve ever passed between them with such openness. 

“Why do you assume that the life I experienced with her involved such?” Tissaia works to back them away from the ledge. She’s had years to figure out how to deal with this, yet some part of her told herself it would never happen. And that she needed to be alright with that. 

Yennefer reaches out then, touches her cheek. Tissaia scolds herself when her eyes close, when she leans into it. She finally settles on something to say to address what Yennefer is asking. 

“This is dangerous,” Tissaia warns. Because it is. Because if a Yennefer keeps pressing, the dam will break and everything she’s kept pressed closely will flood Yennefer. 

So much so that she knows they’ll never come back from it. Because her counterpart has been in love for decades, because she herself has been in love for years now. The length of things such as this, the way they grow for great spans of time, are usually a powerful force when they are let go.

“Why?” Yennefer challenges. “Or do you not wish to tell me that the things that swell my heart are solely my own?”

Yennefer’s grip slackens a little, she gives their bodies room to breathe a bit as Tissaia blinks. _She thinks I’m rejecting her. She thinks I don’t feel the exact same way. That I haven’t been living with the idea of the two of us for days on end._

Even if these words are floating in her brain, she still finds it hard to get past the incredulity of what is occurring.

“You cannot mean this,” Tissaia whispers. 

“You’ve lifted me from squalor, given me safety and adventure. A lifetime of chaos and peace at the same time. I owe you everything. You saved me,” Yennefer says, her tone close to the way it gets when a person pleads sometimes. 

When they’re asking everything of you and it’s hard to give them what they want back. She’s sure it’s the look her face holds, even if she wants _this_ more than anything. Yennefer rolls her eyes, runs a hand through her hair wildly. Tissaia stops it on the downward sweep and holds it unnervingly still. She fixes Yennefer with her eyes. 

“Say it again,” Tissaia manages to let it rise up from the deepest part of her, the part that’s stayed hidden or tucked down. Out of view so that Yennefer could never know what she carried. 

A tilt of the woman’s head. The flicker of what’s been said emboldening the blood of Yennefer to where she’s hovering a hand over the curvature of Tissaia’s hip. She looks up from her fixation on it and repeats herself. 

“Show me the word you created with her through touch.” This time it is no question. Instead, it almost bears the markers of command. 

Tissaia does not miss this. She lets this set her to purpose too. She begins to tell their story. 

“The first place she touched me,” Tissaia admits and bends Yennefer’s fingers to graze along the top of her breasts, still in the vicinity of where their chests had pressed together. “I was holding a dagger to her throat and pushing her as hard as I could against the side of a building because she was trying to gain entrance to Aretuza.”

Yennefer chuckles even though her eyes are alight. “I would expect nothing less of you. Or myself,” she smiles. 

Tissaia moves Yennefer’s hands gently down, resting one on either side of her hips. “Next was here. She managed to catch me unaware and held me down.” Tissaia’s cheeks pink a little. She grits her teeth a bit. “Her legs were on either side of my hips.”

A small noise escapes Yennefer, not exactly a moan but something akin to it. A whimper perhaps. Tissaia tries not to internalize it to the point where it wedges inches away from where Yennefer’s hands could sweep from rest. 

“This is still your first meeting?” Yennefer asks. Tissaia gives a wordless nod.

She moves one of Yennefer’s hands to press against the small of her back. “I had to take her to Aretuza undetected. I placed a cloaking spell on her and she held on to me here in order to make the journey in anonymity.” _Like we have done sometimes._

The small touches are progressively getting harder to remain unaffected by. If the flare of Yennefer’s nostrils is indicative of her own feelings, she’s not far behind Tissaia on losing vestiges of restraint. 

A smile forms on Tissaia’s lips now as she arrives at the next spot on the mental roadmap. Hands trek up, touching a shoulder. “In the stacks. She playfully nudged me as tried to persuade me that finding a way back to her world was possible.”

“A good memory then,” Yennefer’s voice is soft. Tissaia cradles herself in it, speaks the simplistic _yes_. 

She reaches up and laces her fingers through Yennefer’s, lets their hands drop still entwined. They stand toe to toe, slightly different from how it originally went. Still, the connectivity of their fingers is the important aspect of the journey. 

“We held hands as we cast a spell together. Magic has a greater success rate when more power is produced to bolster the initial incantation,” Tissaia tries to not make Yennefer feel as if this juncture is to comment on her own lack of the Art. 

But Tissaia was born hundreds of years ago and something as basic as holding hands still bears great meaning, great importance, as a marker of intimate touch. 

“The next one is a little more...tricky. Because while she did not technically touch me, she commanded it so. Tissaia knows this one will likely stall out both of their brains. But she has agreed to this, so there is no sense not seeing it through. 

Tissaia steps as close to Yennefer as she can without touching her and looks up into her eyes. While she’s got her distracted by the intense gaze, she works her hand not holding Yennefer to pull up her skirt a bit and then quickly presses the woman’s hand against the hot flesh of the inside of her thigh. She watches Yennefer’s eyes roll back in her head.

A tongue darts out to lick her lips and then her mouth hangs agape as her head tilts back. “Tissaia, _fuck…_ ”

And just the utterance of it reminds her of this woman’s alternate, how in intense or overwhelming situations, the language becomes a way of commenting, a way of coping. It must be no different now.

“It was the meeting of the kingdoms. She asked me to describe my dress from behind a dressing screen. It had a long slit up to just above the knee and she wondered what it would feel like to touch me here. Told me to do so myself and tell her of it.”

This is the line. Everything from here on out crosses the point of no return. Because every touch that Yennefer had given Tissaia had been building to culminate late one night in a bed, firelight dancing across their bodies as they came together for the first time. 

Tissaia places both of Yennefer’s hands on her cheeks, holds her around the waist as Yennefer squeaks out a tiny and bit desperate sound when her touch leaves the heat of her inner thigh. 

Yennefer seems to grasp where this next one is going. Perhaps it’s for this reason that Tissaia gives her no warning. Perhaps it’s because her own selfishness wills her to do it.

Whatever the reason, she’s finally kissing Yennefer after years of want. After years of being in love and not being able to do one damn thing about it. 

Because Tissaia has had to give Yennefer time too. Enough so that she could make her own choices, could wind back or deviate from the path that another version of herself has taken in another world. She’s had to meet Tissaia halfway or else a future between the two of them could never work. She has had to do her own course in falling in love. 

It isn’t like kissing a ghost, the press of Yennefer’s lips feeling wholly different even though she may look the exact same as the predecessor Tissaia met. But this woman and her mouth are infinitely different. 

Somehow the absence of chaos has made her softer, seemingly more pliable beneath Tissaia’s fingertips. The hard edge to her is missing as well, the desire to prove herself the best and greatest at any and all things missing in her steady and gliding pace against Tissaia. 

That doesn’t mean her body is though. It’s muscled and strong and Yennefer grips Tissaia like the world could end and she’d shield her from the onslaught of it. There’s vigor there and discipline, carving her into a physical specimen that can produce awe. 

She tastes different too. There’s desperation there, yes, far back on Yennefer’s tongue, but it isn’t as staggering as the woman she kissed so many years ago. Tissaia isn’t able to take back its flavor into her own cheeks because it is but a faint fizzle that dissipates almost immediately. 

This Yenn is a sampling of gratitude, of realization. Of a gradual tipping over into the bursting now of her heart and the absolute willingness to show Tissaia that for all that may be similar, her soul isn’t the same. And that is what truly matters about a person when everything else is stripped away. 

“Do you feel as if I am an apparition?” Yennefer speaks in a gentle puffing against Tissaia’s lips. And for all the ache Tissaia has felt since the event, it doesn’t even begin to compare to the one that forms now at not being able to dive right back in and silence Yennefer with the stroke of her hands. 

Time though is what is needed here. That delicate and dangerous thing that is never to be trifled with or thrown away in discard. So Tissaia bids her heart to hang on a little longer while she tells Yennefer what she absolutely needs to hear. 

“You are not her, my precious heart. You never were. I’m sorry if I ever looked at you with shadows on my face, stuck inside some version of a reality I should have never been a part of. While I don’t dismiss its occurrence or impact on my life, I apologize if I ever made you think it was a necessity to be anything other than what you wonderfully are. 

“While she might have had a hand in me loving you from the beginning, you have changed the shape of what I feel to be only a product of your own life force. Yennefer, I am in love with you—not bits and pieces of you to be composed into my own created version.” 

Tears are starting to form, the impact of what she’s saying boiling up from her heart. “Destiny may have put us together in every lifetime that exists but Yenn—it is you and I who make our world here. It can be what we want it to be. And I will spend every day I’m left on this soil proving to you that this is the case. That these are the things I feel inside of here.”

She brings Yennefer’s hand to her heart, presses it so there is no mistake that the elevated beating is a product of anything other than the woman before her. “This is your creation. You have developed this cadence under your fingers. From here on out, no more touches belong to her, only you and I.”

Tissaia watches Yennefer’s face through all of this. At the way it changes like one's face going up mountains and down them. There’s a gamut of emotions to read and Tissaia would be frivolous to say that all of them are satisfying. She watches as Yennefer closes her eyes again and she feels the tightening of her fingers against the muted flesh of her ribs through the fabric. 

“Would you think less of me if I admit that this is something I’ve thought of many nights in this place? That even before I could understand what I felt for you, I’ve wanted you to love me in even a sliver of the way you loved her?” Yennefer’s purple eyes flutter open. 

Tissaia presses her forehead against Yennefer and stares into them. “I love you even more, to a greater beyond. Because we’re here. Because we are together. Because I’ve had more than a handful of days to love every single thing that you are.”

It’s the last thing that’s said between them and then there are no more words because Yennefer is lifting Tissaia up with her strong warrior’s arms, the muscles and sinews and bones easily being able to both slowly inch the dress upward and shift her hands to the backs of Tissaia’s thighs. 

With each step, Yennefer seems to bury her face deeper into the crook of Tissaia’s neck, which she cants to the side in order to allow access. When they reach the bed, Tissaia works at them so that she is beneath Yennefer’s firm body. Not on top. 

If this is going to be different, everything must be. She lets Yennefer work at the ties of her dress, the cords going from knots to straight lines. It’s peeled down Tissaia’s body with the pace of a snail, like unwrapping something and not wanting the surprise to ever end. 

Soon, she’s bare everywhere. The contrast of colors and sounds and, yes, even smells has the irises of Yennefer’s eyes shining in a way that she’s never seen them, in a way the adrenaline of a fight has never done.

It’s rose-colored nipples pebbled in the air of the cottage, pale skin prickling goose flesh not because of cold but because of anticipation. The heaving up and down of Tissaia’s chest as she lies in wait for whatever Yennefer may do. It’s the faintest wafting of juniper despite them being near the breaking waves, the salt of those too, and of the essence of Yennefer herself. 

Not lilac and gooseberries. The delicateness of something akin to clove, deeper still the petals of the drooping iris awash with color. It’s the scent of this deposited somewhere on Yennefer’s skin that Tissaia discovers in excavation, her nose tracing every curve and divot of the woman’s neck as Yennefer presses them together gloriously. 

Tissaia’s fingers thread through the raven tresses of Yennefer’s hair, a loom like motion that winds the strands in curls around her digits. Hugs them in a way that brings Tissaia somewhat giddy happiness. Like they’re clutching and hanging on. Like she’ll get to stay wrapped in them forever. 

While she’s no artist, she is good at weaving with her hands as well. Mostly just spells, yes, but Tissaia finds she’s good at other things too. Despite years of the absence of delicate lovers, of the same span of time spent perfecting touch to her own body, she is able to find something that feels like a memento of a bygone life. Of how a woman’s body works, how it needs to be worked to find the pleasure within and out. 

The frivolity of Tissaia’s own thoughts startles her a bit as Yennefer gasps a building song in her ears as she lays atop her, lets her own body climb and descend as the seconds go. Tissaia can just imagine the melody of them played by lute in some alehouse or tavern, a tale of forbidden love that strangled a heart until it turned real. 

Yennefer, with her strong arms and nimble fingers, is contrastingly gentle, the way she rotates her hips with suavity as she moves against Tissaia’s thigh that she also works in between. It’s so fluid and graceful and Tissaia has trouble hanging on, desperately clinging to linen beneath her hands and clinging to this moment for as long as she can.

Tissaia is many things—collected, precise, reasonable—but none of those attributes serve her well as she gives herself over to Yennefer after too much time living another way. She’s closing her eyes and rolling inside of wave after wave of undulating tremors that wreck her body. 

Her heart clenches like her thighs and she knows what’s going to happen next with zero ability to stop it from becoming so. They’re back to her unspoken words. Only now they don’t feel as if they have to remain shelved for a later date. No part of her has to think and then not say. So she does.

“I love you, Yenn,” Tissaia smooths a thumb over the woman’s brow, trying to undo the creasing of it from being spent at giving Tissaia what she’s dreamed of for years. “I always have.”

“I know,” Yennefer breathes out, raises her purple eyes to Tissaia’s blue. “You are my home.” 

With that, she burrows into the crook of Tissaia’s neck, almost childlike in her seeming want to get as close as humanly possible in an effort to feel secure. And suddenly, this thing that Tissaia has been standing in the harbor of for years just _becomes_. 

It’s the groundwork laid, brick after brick put down and waiting, even sometimes painful to look at and never used. But Tissaia has had no mortar until now, nothing to keep the blocks from toppling down. Yennefer has held on to that and it feels like the two of them coming together, working side by side, building something grand. 

_Home_ is what Yennefer has said. Not always a place, per se, but still a spot to lay one’s head. Of much toil mixed with dedication. Made from forces working together to create, to hold on to, to curl up in. 

Tissaia holds her cooling body against her own, flesh to flesh, heart to heart, smiles meeting in encapsulating peace. Forever has come. Tissaia’s heart feels like it may burst. 

It’s both exactly how she imagined and better than everything. The only reality that’s ever mattered is this one. And that’s finally something she can feel good about believing in. She kisses Yennefer’s head, grips her tighter, holds on for wonderful and dear life. 

**Epilogue**

She whispers it into her skin one night, stars burning and wind wafting salt air through the cracks of the shutters on a chilly fall night. 

“Close your eyes,” she commands against her body. “What is it that you see?” 

Tissaia works and works against Yennefer, revels in the fact that they’ve still got the potency to take one another apart with such chaotic fire after being together for years. After she’d dropped the guise of being unaffected by everything so wholly Yennefer from the moment she paid four marks for her in Vengerberg all that time ago. 

“I see nothing but you,” Yennefer pants, works her hips in the same desperate motion of Tissaia’s hand. “You are my dream now, you have been it forever. When will you finally believe what I say?” 

It’s said with eyes closed and back arching, effort and drive toward a culmination of pleasure. Tissaia hums in response, always set to purpose when this occurs, and doesn’t even try to block her mind when Yennefer leans against it. She doesn’t try to hide what she’s thinking, of the other world inside her head. 

Yennefer’s eyes snap open after the pulsing against Tissaia’s fingers ceases. There’s sweat prickling her skin, the beads little drops of condensation Tissaia would like to remove with her tongue. Her purple eyes narrow, but there’s a slight quirk of her lips at the corners when she speaks. 

“What are you planning?” she asks warily.

“Go with me somewhere,” Tissaia murmurs and leans in to kiss once panting lips. 

She squeaks when she’s expertly flipped. Blue eyes open to look up, covered on each side in a waterfall of brown locks. Somewhere underneath it, Yennefer awaits. Using her fingers again, she brushes some of it aside to catch Yennefer’s smile. 

“Anywhere,” is the breathed response, and whatever idea Tissaia has let Yennefer brush vaguely against the inside of her mind fizzles away when the woman touches her again, not for the first time and not for the last. Still blissful after forever together. 

//

When they both make it to the path of life and begin walking it together, it morphs them. They’re no pattern, no cutout of anyone else but themselves. Of who they are together. 

Because Tissaia is head over heels, irrevocably in love. And finally, _finally_ , she knows Yennefer feels the same. This makes every moment full, every touch full of its own type of magic.

It’s been a few weeks since they’ve seen each other though, that amount of time its own desperate agony, and Tissaia has tried to stay busy with the day to day life of the school until Yennefer returns from the edges of the world.

The way her body thrums with the electricity of anticipation, of soon coming together again, has Tissaia’s focus wiry at best and completely shot at worst. There’s no detecting when Yennefer will walk through the door, no chaos to tell her when she’s near. Instead, it’s missives of longing, of wanting. Ones that have gotten fewer and far between.

When the door opens, her heart jumps into her throat and she spins around from her perch at a table in the green room to see Yennefer striding toward her with such purpose, such possession. There’s a smile on her face but her gait is a flurry.

She sweeps Tissaia into her arms amongst the white myrtle, wolf’s aloe, verbena, and honeysuckle. Tissaia doesn’t even try to chastise the woman as she’s lifted on the workstation and sat, of the way Yennefer comes to pin herself between Tissaia’s legs with palms pressed tightly against the wood on either side. 

There’s no part of her that thinks about staunching the kiss even though they’re in Aretuza, even though someone could walk in and see them in a compromising position. Tissaia has waited years for this, to be able to do this, and she’s of no mind to ever stop it now. 

“Gods, I’ve missed you,” she breathes with a smile against Yennefer’s lips and her face in her hands. 

“I’ll go to the edges of the earth every day if it means this upon my return,” Yennefer teases and drops to take their mouths against one another again. 

“I’ll likely not stand for that, I assure you,” Tissaia swats Yennefer away lightly but wraps her legs around her waist. “And what does the end of the earth hold anyway that you cannot find right…”

That’s all she gets to say, her red hot words dying on her lips and her face going ghostly pale as she feels the magic cut through the atmosphere of the green room. She quickly works to extricate herself from around Yennefer’s hips and tries to ignore the question in Yennefer’s eyes but it’s too late.

Through a portal step their alternate selves. One holds a stern look bordering on consternation on her face while the others is wild amusement. Tissaia bites her lip sheepishly and lets Yennefer slowly place her back on the floor.

“Oh, don’t let our arrival stop whatever is occurring here,” the small and severe woman announces. Tissaia wants to deck her, but wonders if punching herself would create a butterfly effect. Then the woman’s lips curl at the edges. “I know once upon a time, I didn’t.”

 _Oh-ho_. Tissaia runs her tongue over her teeth as her mouth hangs open, absolutely catching the reference that her other self is throwing out. _To my own little voyeuristic experience._ But then Tissaia’s eyes leave her double and go to the woman she met years ago. Yennefer’s eyes are swirling and Tissaia feels every bit of the woman’s magic doing the same within her body.

It’s only when her Yennefer reaches down and squeezes her hand that Tissaia realizes she’s been staring.

“I thought you cut the link,” the Yennefer across from her says incredulously. 

They’ve still not spoken to one another and Tissaia doesn’t even know what to say to a woman she never thought she’d see again. 

“Some things are not lost forever,” her alternate admits. “And even though you belong to me, I know her friendship would mean the world to you.”

This is more than Tissaia knows what to do with and if the death grip from her own Yennefer’s fingers is any indication of her own feelings, she assumes her love feels the same. She watches her puff her chest out and then let go of her fingers. 

She opens her mouth to tell Yennefer to stop whatever she’s doing as she watches her take a step toward the other versions of themselves but at the last second, she spins on the ball of her foot and startles Tissaia a bit. 

“Do I have something to be envious of?” Her voice is low, almost a whisper, and her eyes are sincere but scared too. Her face goes wary as she sort of turns her head to the pair behind them. “I’m sorry for being slightly possessive but…”

“No!” Tissaia cups her cheeks and speaks her next words resoundingly. “Not at all. I love you. That is a constant that will never change.”

Behind them, Tissaia hears the other Yennefer clearing her throat and her boots scuffing across the floor as she comes to stand in front of herself. She extends a gloved hand and lets it dangle in the air, unmet. 

Tissaia’s Yennefer finally turns and looks at the proffered hand. It would take little for Yennefer to fling the other over her shoulder and place a foot to her throat, but Tissaia hopes her training acumen stays out of this tense situation. 

Her breath finally steadies as she watches the two women shake hands. The other lets go with a still surprised laugh as Yennefer breezes by her and comes to stand in front of the other Tissaia. 

She lowers her head a little, does a small curtsy as she stares at the mage’s feet. “I see that you are as regal in other lives as you are inside my own.” Then Yennefer lifts her eyes. “But my woman is yet softer than you because of the goodness of her heart.”

And Tissaia goes from wanting to swell at Yennefer’s formality to wanting to strangle her in the same breath. She works to swallow the lump growing in her throat, unsure of how her counterpart will react to the words. 

The alternate Tissaia purses her lips and gazes into the purple before her. She seems unaware of her own lover she’s brought with her. 

“It’s true, I’ve let certain things harden my heart more than the woman you hold in your arms.” She glances to her Yennefer. “A life spent wanting something and never thinking you’re good enough to have it has no good results on a body. I’ve made many mistakes, yes, but I have spent many years trying to rectify them too. Just as you have spent your years trying to rectify who you are.”

“And what would you know of me?” Yen asks. Tissaia waits for what comes next.

“More than you think. You’ve a fighter's hands. You’ve done your own battling, not only internally but externally as well,” Tissaia observes.

“Cintra bred me. My lady continues to keep me this way,” a grin blooms across Yennefer’s face as she glances back. 

Tissaia scoffs lightly but can’t help the smile that works its way onto her face either. Yennefer has this effect on her. She is grateful to have it floating with light airiness inside of her being. 

“Good to know,” the other Tissaia nods and Tissaia swears she sees the ghosting of a smile threatening on her face too.

“This is so incredibly weird,” she hears the woman responsible for the start of so much morphology in her heart say. 

If not for the sorceress with the raven locks and purple eyes, Tissaia would not have her Yennefer to hold in her hands, in her arms. Finally feeling some sense of something to say, she steps closer to the trio and reaches out to embrace the first Yennefer she ever knew. 

There is a split moment of rigidity to Yennefer before she relaxes into the embrace. Tissaia manages to catch a stray thought, surprised the woman’s mind isn’t locked tighter than a vice. She can’t help but smile at the flicker of worry she feels about their position when both of their mates stand at their sides. 

“Perhaps you and I should embrace as well? Show them what it’s like to watch them do it in front of us,” Tissaia’s Yennefer grouses to the other one and crosses her hands across her chest. 

“I see you’ve mated with a petulant child,” Yennefer backs away from Tissaia and teases. “I’m sure she keeps you both young and your muliebrity intact.”

“Still incorrigible, I see,” Tissaia backs away, feels comfortable enough to place a kiss on Yennefer’s cheek before backing away to lace her arm inside of her own Yenn. 

She watches her mirror do the same with hers. “It’s good to see us happy and that our hearts have settled to where they belong.”

“It seems we find each other in every version of life,” Yenn presses closer to her and says. Tissaia fights the urge to lean in and kiss her in front of everyone. 

“Thank goodness,” she finds herself whispering and never once removing her blue eyes from the purple she’s fallen in love with day after day, now year after year. Yenn smiles and raises her hand to her lips, kisses her fingers softly. 

“It must be destiny then,” Yennefer says with all of the pride her voice can contain. 

For someone who had come from another world not believing in it at all, Tissaia supposes the woman has done her own kind of changing too. That they’re not the women who skirmished together, not the ones that raked hot hands across one another’s bodies once upon a time. But then again, maybe Tissaia is precisely that person too. 

The Yennefer from another world crashed into her life for a week and turned Tissaia upside and irrevocably. If not for her, she would never know about the Yenn in her own world, would maybe not have loved her almost immediately. So perhaps Yennefer is exactly the person who kissed Tissaia dreaming of the woman beside her and touched her just the same. 

She understands it all now, how hard it had been for Yennefer to be split the feelings, to understand that Tissaia wasn’t the woman she had gone through life with and had fallen in love with when her face and body looked almost the same. 

Tissaia has had to learn this too, the parting far harder to split inside of her mind and heart than anything. But she’s come to the other side of it and wouldn’t have it any other way, not when Yenn makes every day worth the struggle of finally finding their way. 

“Thank goodness,” Yenn agrees, her voice equally as grateful. 

Tissaia feels Yenn squeeze her tighter and she closes her eyes, the last thing she sees as she does the smiles of their doubles and then the absolute love of her life. 

Yes, destiny does truly exist. How she’s managed to make it to this path where she should have been all along is astounding, given the winds in the road. 

For all the magic in the world, the sheer concentration of it in this room, there’s something even more powerful at work here. Tissaia can feel it down to her bones. The love that binds them to one another feels almost unbreakable. 

And that? That is something magic can’t even begin to touch. 


End file.
